Academic Requirements Should Be Much More Rigorous in All Grade Levels

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Academic requirements should be much more rigorous in all of our schools, in all grades, and in all states. Furthermore, I feel that there should be continuity of requirements state to state and countrywide. What has happened to academics in our country is deplorable. Not only has the Department of Education played a role but has insisted on “Dumbing Down” our education system in favor of making sure that no one student has “hurt feelings”. This did not happen overnight but over the course of the past 30 years and it is going to take years to repair the damage that has been done, “if”, it can be repaired at all. Academic requirements should be standardized and upheld at such a level as to produce students that are ready to attend an institution of higher learning without the need for remedial class work.

There has been a lot written on this subject by notable authors and educators, and they all appear to be in agreement about one thing, all of our school systems and educators have been made to follow unorthodox methods of educating our children. One such educator, Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, whom also served as Senior Policy Advisor in the US Department of Education, has blown the whistle on government activities that have been withheld from the public about our educational system. She cites that our educational system has become a warm, fuzzy, soft, mushy, touchy-feely experience, where its main purpose has become socialization, not learning. (Iserbyt) It is very easy to see this socialization policy in all of our schools, I agree that socialization is an important aspect of school in light of our multicultural population; however, it should not be the primary goal. Academics, the basics, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic should b...

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...h grade level. How sad for all of those new grads to find out that they have spent 12 years in school and are not able to pass a 7th grade level test for employment. What is even sadder is that when the new graduates get to the college of their choice it is highly probable that they will find themselves in a remedial class to learn what they should have been taught in high school.

Works Cited

Iserbyt, C. T. (n.d.). The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America. The deliberate dumbing down of america. Retrieved August 16, 2010, from http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com

Mitchell, R. (2004, April 27). Dumbing Down Our Schools. The Washington Post, p. A21.

Sykes, C. J. (1996). Dumbing down our kids: why America's children feel good about themselves but can't read, write, or add. Retrieved August 16, 2010, from http://www.sntp.net/education/education_stats.htm

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